Sunday, April 18, 2010

Why Are We in Afghanistan?

Ninety-Four Percent of Kandaharis Want Peace Talks, Not War is the title of a piece that makes a strong case that Barack Obama is a deliberate war-monger in Afghanistan. Even only polling non-Taliban-controlled areas proved a few months ago that the people prefer the Taliban to the Karzai government, and they likely prefer the Karzai crowd to us. So much for the Peace Prize.

The U. S. have lived for years in a world with a lot of enemies and even more "bad guys". But until now, we haven't gone after them. The latest Iraq war at least had the virtue of overthrowing a hated leader who had engaged in an unprovoked war several years earlier on some of our allies. So far as we can tell, though, the Taliban are now an indigenous force in Afghanistan. It looks as though the "foreigners" are in Pakistan.

Sometimes you just have to suck it up. Let's rebuild Detroit rather than destroy and then rebuild Kandahar or bring "progress" to Marja--such as roads and electricity.

When you have no one in the country you are fighting for, either you have little reason to engage in a protracted war or you have to plan to take control for a long time. Mr. Obama perhaps believes that his popularity in certain parts of the world is enough to make the Afghans turn against the Taliban and toward us and our favored group. Quite a gamble. And meanwhile the deficits keep mounting.

Copyright (C) Long Lake 2010

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